Community Social Psychology and Women’s Social Participation in Argentina

Demands and Challenges for University Extension

Abstract

From the praxis of community social psychology and feminisms, the aim of this
paper is to reflect on the experiences of problematisation and co-management of
collective-community devices in the enforceability of rights with women participants
in social and trade union movements developed in different historical moments of
the university extension project in the Observatory of promotion and prevention of
community health of the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Buenos Aires.
The work addresses the tensions of social and political participation of women
belonging to the piquetero movement, neighbourhood assemblies and a trade union
organisation, using Participatory Action Research as a methodological strategy. In
the different processes, a plurality of techniques were implemented, such as in-depth
interviews, surveys, participant observations, life stories, focus groups, workshops
and participatory evaluations in/with the organisations, based on relational ethics,
dialogicality, justice and equity in access to human rights. In this framework, the article
reflects on the possibilities and limits of psychosocial interventions proposed from
the field of community social psychology, in a social scenario with neoliberal policies
of precariousness of life and devastation of the territories, but also the emergence of
new social actors who resist and produce new modes of organisation, sociability and
subjectivity. In the current critical scenario, we propose the recovery of historical
memory and the knowledge produced from the experiences analysed.